Oh, my stars and garters!

Dilemma

We don't want trick-or-treaters tonight, but we do want the pizza guy to find our house. Porch light on or off? So far my solution has been to leap up and turn the light off whenever I hear children laughing and then switch it back on as they retreat.

It's not that we have a problem with kids coming up for candy. It's just that our yard, while kinda-sorta fixed, is still pretty sloppy and treacherous. Also, we live on the edge of our neighborhood, which means we might get some trick-or-treaters but probably not enough to make buying candy even worth it.

While I'm waiting for the pizza guy, I'll tell you the saddest trick-or-treating story ever. A lot of you have heard this already, but that's all right.

Ok, we used to live next door to a couple who took in a lot of foster children. We knew these kids fairly well, in that we were constantly shooing them out of the carport and running out to see if they were okay when they wrecked their bikes in front of our house, stuff like that. They were all pretty nice kids.

One Halloween, one of the little girls came to the door dressed like a fairy or a princess or something. I admired her costume and then had to admit that we'd forgotten to buy candy that year. We didn't even have any change to give out or anything. She looked crestfallen, so I apologized a lot and told her to come back the next year; we'd have tons of candy. Good stuff, too. Snickers and Skittles, all she wanted, honest.

Flash forward a year, and yeah, you guessed it. We forgot to buy candy again. The girl comes racing up to our front door before it's even dark out. She's so excited, she's been waiting all year, this is going to be the best haul ever!

But then she sees the look on my face as I realize what I've done. I start to open my mouth to apologize, but before I can say anything she says, quietly and vehemently, "You promised." Then she turns on her heel and walks back to the street as I stand there, my mouth still open in horror.

So that is the story of how I robbed a little orphan girl of her Halloween candy. Not one of my prouder moments, it's true. But our pizza is here now, so I'm going to stop dwelling on that so I can turn off the porch light and eat my dinner.

Rooroo wishes you a happy Halloween as well.

This is the creepiest one yet.

Have a happy, spooky Halloween!

xoxo,
Joolie and Eric (?)

Kostümungewißheit

After writing and reading the comments in that last post, I think we English speakers need access to even more German compound words.

What about one for the sense of awkwardness that arises when you're at a Halloween party and you're not sure if you should compliment someone on their costume because you've never met them before and for all you know they're not wearing a costume but in fact actually make a habit of wearing 70s-era shirts open to their chests with tight polyester pants hiked up over their crotches?

Come on, Germans, step up and provide us with more overlong but poetically apt words so we can more succinctly describe all the ridiculous shit that goes on in our lives. We are clearly lacking in that department over here.

Our cat is stuck on the neighbors' roof

He is crying. It is pathetic and it is horrible.

It is also, however, four in the morning, and I'm not about scare the shit out of the girls next door by climbing around on their porch and carport in an attempt get him down.

I feel awful, but it's honestly not that high and I can see that he's not hurt. Stinky's a pretty intrepid cat; I know he can get down on his own. I'm pretty sure he's just a big dork who's freaked himself out pretty badly. Is there a German compound word for simultaneously wanting to cry and laugh your ass off?

Update, 4:28 a.m.: Rescued with the help of a stepladder and Eric's superior wingspan! I'm going to bed.

I like book

I'm taking a break while the glue dries on the dumbest Halloween costume ever. I can't tell you about it, but I can tell you about the books I bought yesterday. They are:

Making Comics by Scott McCloud. I am already a quarter of the way through this book and I love it. His style is straightforward, self-effacing, and appealing, he really knows his shit, and the examples he uses are extremely apt and sometimes hilarious. It's probably not as great as Understanding Comics, blah, blah, blah, but it's a complete joy to read and it's already made me think a lot about how to tell a good story.

Nice Big American Baby by Judy Budnitz. I've never heard of Judy Budnitz; have you?  (Probably. I seem to be paying almost no attention to what's going on around me lately.) Anyway, I based this  purchase solely on the recommendation card on the shelf at BookPeople that said it's "funny, horrible, and true." That all sounded pretty good to me, so I grabbed it. It's all short stories, and I've read probably three so far. 

I like it but don't love it. The thing is, I just (almost) finished a book of short stories by Kelly Link that I borrowed from Joel. Judy Budnitz and Kelly Link are both white American women in their 30s writing about strange things happening to ordinary people in this kind of magical realism style, so fairly or not, it's impossible for me not to compare the two. So here's the comparison: Judy Budnitz's stories are a little cleaner and more accessible, but her writing style is not nearly as lovely and satisfyingly disturbing as Kelly Link's. I'm glad I'm reading this book, but if I had to do it over again I might have just checked it out of the library.   

I need more short-story writers, I think. Anything else I should read?            

Hey, everybody!

Except for you, silly. I don't mean you.

Seep

A recent phone conversation:

Me: All that work you guys have been doing, very slowly? Well, it's caused a serious problem. There is a sewage leak. There's toilet paper and water and god knows what flooding up into the planter bed in the carport.
My landlady: It's Saturday. What do you want me to do about it?
Me: Um, call an emergency plumber?
My landlady: I don't see what that would help. What can they do?
Me: Hmm. I don't know. FIX THE SEWAGE LEAK IN THE CARPORT?

I didn't realize I could actually get so angry. As someone who is kind of angry to begin with, this was a revelation. I was so angry I was almost calm, and the whole time I was thinking, Wow, it's so amazing how angry I am. I can't believe I'm this angry. Gosh. Holy moly. I am so angry.

Neil Sperry, eat your heart out.

Stay tuned...

Neurosis is red

A fun fact about me is that I have a tendency to overreact. I am acutely aware of this, so I sometimes overcorrect for that. Then I underreact. I think. Because then I'm not sure if I really am underreacting. Maybe I'm reacting perfectly. Maybe I'm still overreacting, just not as much as I ordinarily would have. Or maybe I'm underreacting way, way too much, and should compensate the other way by making it a point to completely freak the fuck out about everything.

How can you trust your instincts if your main instict seems to be to question every single aspect of every single decision you make until it's so multisided that it's essentially meaningless?

I can easily see myself getting eaten by bears someday. I would just stand there in front of the bears, frozen and indecisive, unable to determine exactly how much danger I'm facing.

I should probably tell you that this doesn't really pertain to anything in particular. I was just thinking about it. (Unless I'm deluding myself and it actually pertains to everything. EVERYTHING! OH, MY GOD, I'M RUINING EVERYTHING! Also, THE HOUSE IS ON FIRE! Or is it? I mean, it could be. Is that ridiculous? See what I mean?)

Well, enough of all that. Let's look at flowers.

Eric has a friend who's a florist. He gives Eric flowers to give to me from time to time. The last time he gave us flowers, it was two dozen yellow roses. Those were great until we had them for a week and neglected to throw them out. Then we spent an hour or so trying to figure out what the horrible death smell was in the kitchen. I'm sure we'll take better care of these.

These are parrot tulips. I had never heard of them until tonight. I think they are strange and very pretty.

Busted

When my sister turned 21, I gave her a gag gift. I had another, nicer gift set aside as well, but first I gave her a beer koozie and acted like that was her big present.

It wasn't just any beer koozie, either. It was a dirty white American flag beer koozie, with fingerprints on the outside and a bunch of dust and hair on the inside. As beer koozies go, it sucked the big one.

My sister's face fell when she unwrapped it, but because she's a sweet girl, she quickly recovered and squealed with delight as she thanked me: Awwwwwwww! At the time, I was greatly amused and also a little insulted that she actually thought I would try to pass that off as a great gift.

In retrospect, it was a stupid joke, and also kind of a mean one. The really bad part is that I can never trust her reaction to my gifts again, and now I'll never know for sure if she honestly likes the fancy hairdryer I gave her for her birthday last night.

Well, I hope she did because she's an excellent sister who deserves good things. Happy birthday, Jill! You're my very favorite sister of all.

jjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjj!

Remember how a while ago I said the space bar on my keyboard was broken? Well, it's gotten a little better, but it's still pretty screwed. Some other keys are messed up too. The 'j' key is the worst. It gets stuck and stays down, which makes it difficult to do a lot of things online, especially when your name is Jjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjj...oolie.

This problem stems from the night the cat and I spilled beer on the keyboard and I couldn't get it dried out properly. I feel kind of dumb trying to assign blame for this on my cat as I was the one actually holding and therefore spilling the beer, but it was his jumping on my lap that caused me to startle and lose my grip on the bottle. So it's his fault too.

I really need to get a new keyboard soon because it's not too easy to write when you have to practically karate-chop the keys to get them to work. I mean, it's fun for a while: TAKE! THAT! YOU! STUPID! KEYS! HI-AAAAAAAAAH! but that gets old pretty fast. This has gone on way too long, and it's not like keyboards are that expensive. Honestly, I don't know what my problem is. I guess I'm just a big dumb jjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjj

Mmmm

Quack's coffeeshop, East 38th 1/2 Street.

Pluggity plug

If you need something to do on Sunday afternoon, come by and see us at End of an Ear during the South First Art Walk. Eric will be selling his delightfully disturbing prayer candles, Dan will have photos, and for those of you wanting to pick up an I Am Not Lonely T-shirt, this is your big chance. Or just come out and say hi and look at some arts and crafts and records; it looks like the other businesses will have some really cool stuff too. Oh, and Animal Trustees of Austin will benefit from all this somehow, and they're super nice. Okay, then. Have a good weekend. To art!

The shitty ghost

Discussion questions about the shitty ghost:

1. Why do you think the ghost is shitty?

2. Do you think the ghost intends to be shitty? Why or why not?

3. It has been said that in a postindustrial society, many--if not most--things are shitty. Using this assumption as the framework for your answer, explain how the shitty ghost might serve as a symbol for the modern condition.

Snitches get ditches

We have had a trench in our yard for the better part of a week now, with no other sign of activity or progress.

The trench is very ugly and very messy and very much in the way. This is starting to bum us out.

Luckily, with the help of our friends and neighbors (who also have to look at the stupid thing and recently suggested we convert it into a water ride that shoots unsuspecting thrill-seekers into the middle of the street), we have decided to apply a rebranding strategy.

We no longer have a trench in our front yard. Nor a ditch nor a gash nor a half-finished repair job that if a certain someone weren't so goddamn ....

No. Now we have a moat.

Isn't that so much nicer? I think it's almost...baronial.

Some kind of sense

My space bar is messed up. This makes it very hard to write, so I won't. Instead please enjoy the exquisite corpses Eric and I drew to pass the time during our six-hour delay at JFK airport last summer.

 

Stars and Garters Laboratories presents: The EXHAUSTO-TRON 3000

Half a cat

Our old neighbors posted a message on the neighborhood Yahoo group saying a cat that fit Wallace's desciption perfectly had just started to show up for their daily feral feeding, did he belong to anyone?

Woohoo! Not dead! I'd been worried.

We went over there today to find out more, and the neighbors said they'd call us if they were able to catch him.  I doubt they can get near him, but they're welcome to try.

We offered to pay for food if that didn't work out, which they declined. The woman pointed out that she wasn't wild about taking care of another stray cat, and I don't blame her a bit.

But I don't know if there's really much else we can do. It was damn near impossible to catch him last time, let alone keep him. I'm really glad he's okay, but I still feel pretty crappy about the whole thing.

See, if everybody would just get their damn pets fixed then we wouldn't have these sad situations with animals that don't really belong to anyone, that are totally sweet but too wild to keep.

I could throttle the shitbag who let his cat spew out multiple litters, all the while claiming they were his pets and telling us he'd gotten them fixed(!) when we offered to help him with the situation, until one day he just up and moved and left most of them behind. Which is how we came to meet Wallace, and we know how that ends: yuckily. Or maybe not. We'll see.

A.M.

There's nothing to get your workday started like pretending you're going to run over your officemate as he's crossing the street. Good morning! Although I did feel a twinge of conscience when I fake-revved the engine and he jumped back to the curb with a look of concern, if not terror, on his face. I'm so sure! Like I would ever risk screwing up my alignment like that.

Palace of Malice

The hand-dug trench in the yard is a little bit longer today, which I guess is progress. The lids to a couple of our big Rubbermaid tubs have been placed inside. I'm not sure why. The hole is only about a foot and a half deep and in no danger of caving in, but I left them in there because I'm sure there is a reason.

The bees that live in the yard swamp get confused and migrate over to the porch light, bashing themselves drunkenly into the glass over and over. When I wake up in the morning there is a scattering of dead bees on the porch.

The oak above the carport drops acorns every few minutes, making a sharp, dismal sound on the metal roof. They bounce off my car hood and onto the driveway, where they get smashed by my tires. The oak is huge and and mighty. Someone long ago put a hole in the carport roof to accommodate it, which I thought was nice. There is another oak on the opposite side of the house that someone built the eaves around, but that oak is dead. Oak trees really have to play the odds. All those acorns and so few trees.

Oh, and the hummingbirds are gone and the succulents are starting to look stunted because they don't get enough light.

All this is not so bad. A little discouraging, but not so bad. It's just not really that fun to hang out on the front porch right now, is all.

Awareness is raised, okay?

I'm as down on breast cancer as anyone, honest, but I when I saw the display of fluffy pink "Susan G. Komen Cakes" in the HEB bakery tonight, I couldn't help but think that the pink-stuff shit is getting to be a bit much.

Gush

The kitchen has not been so good to me lately. I woke up this morning to a counter heaped with damp coffee grounds and sad little trickles of coffee all over the counter and the floor. I guess I screwed something up when I filled the coffee basket the night before. It took me forever to get everything cleaned up; you don't wipe up wet coffee grounds so much as smear them around for a while and eventually guide them into the garbage. This was especially difficult because (duh) I hadn't had any coffee yet.

Well, that sucked, but I finally got everything clean and rinsed off and started to make another pot. When I took the water pitcher out of the fridge, it somehow got caught on a just-opened carton of milk, which fell out onto the floor, blurping and spraying all over every damn thing as it went.

I wanted to weep, or scream, or push the refrigerator over onto its side, but I also didn't want to wake Eric up. So I had to settle for whispering a long string of extremely filthy words before I calmly mopped up my fresh dairy massacre and made my stupid coffee. You would have been proud of me, sort of.

HGBS

Eric is dismantling bikes right now, trying to create an überFrankenbike out of his and Roone's old bikes. Apparently this requires a lot of dropping things and cursing.

Also, I took a nap yesterday and dreamed my sister had a penguin house out behind her house. It was decorated like a regular house, but the penguins had the run of the place and were trained to high-five people with their flippers. I think I should take naps more often.

In other news, we are very slowly getting the dining nook/computer area/work space sorted out. We had a nice cabinet thing made for our art supplies, and that helps, but there's still a bunch of crap lying around. After the initial weeks of moving, my interest in decorating and even unpacking has waned considerably. We don't plan on staying here long, so who gives a rat's ass about the window coverings? I can think of 10,000 things I'd rather spend my time and money on than fixing this place up.

I suppose I should at least finish setting up my room. I hung maybe two tiny pictures and my diploma about a month ago and then got distracted by something. I've been too lazy to finish since then, so when you walk into my room all you see is my diploma, framed and alone, right in the middle of the wall.

I'm glad I graduated and all, but believe me, a bachelor's in journalism is nothing to be that proud about. So I should probably hang some other stuff up so I don't look like some sad freak whose all-time life high point was finishing college in 2002. I'm not sure I even want to hang it up anymore, except I don't have much other framed stuff to hang and it takes up space pretty nicely.

I don't know, maybe I should go the other way and set up a shrine to my diploma. Forbid all other decorations, light some incense and candles underneath, and install directional track lighting to really make it pop. Then I can say, come over and check out my diploma, y'all.  Breathe that shit in. Worship it. I've had the same job since 1998.